From Alfred
Nobels prediction that dynamite was such a radical change
that it would lead to the end of war, to similar claims about the machine
gun, the naval torpedo, the bomber, and the nuclear bomb, predictions of
revolutionary change in warfare have been commonplaceand wrong.
 Mackubin Thomas Owens1

The strategic importance of technological improvements in US
military capability is a key but insufficiently examined issue in the transformation of
todays military.2 Is the present Department of Defense (DOD) attempt at
transformation, which focuses on technological solutions to increase capabilities, being
misguided by a vision of a high-tech Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA)? This question
is particularly relevant with regard to attempts to use information management and
networked systems in lieu of increased firepower, better armor, and more manpower. The
current effort may well be leading Americas military in the wrong direction.

This article
suggests that DODs endeavors to pursue technical improvements in warfighting
functions where US forces already display dominance have been excessive to the point of
being counterproductive. Organizational changes based upon assumptions of an ongoing RMA
have already placed at-risk the ability to achieve a rapid victory in Iraq. The minimal
size of ground forces deployed and available for Operation Iraqi Freedom was the result of
planning to fight the war we envisioned, with RMA-capabilities we hoped for, instead of
the enemy and conditions we would actually face. The relatively small force employed for
the initial ground war was stupendously successful, but rapidly lost its effectiveness
during subsequent stability and security operations. Failing to adequately think past the
first move, senior decisionmakers ignored the old adage that the enemy gets a
vote.

95/96

Americas
undisputed dominance of conventional maneuver warfare means that intelligent, adaptive
enemies will engage us with asymmetric strategies and tactics. The current transformation
efforts are not yet capable of meeting this challenge. If the wars of the twenty-first
century will primarily involve rogue regimes and failed states, even exponential increases
in traditional combat capabilities are likely to produce only marginal improvement in our
ability to achieve the larger political objectives. While trying to get even better at the
tasks in which Americas military already excels is prudent, this goal should not be
pursued at the expense of fixing vulnerabilities that current and future enemies are
likely to exploit using asymmetric strategies and tactics. In particular, DOD would be
better served by improving its ability to coordinate and execute interagency operations
that support employment of the entire range of national powera critical improvement
that is likely to require more personnel instead of less and greater emphasis on human
resources rather than technology.

A Historical
Perspective

Arguably, the
earliest well-documented RMA occurred during the First Punic War between Carthage and
Rome. One of the leading city-states, Carthage was the greatest maritime power of the age
and possessed major trade routes throughout the known world when the war began in 264 B.C. Its armies had also been widely victorious. Consisting mostly of
mercenaries and allied troops led by Carthaginian officers, they had been successful in
expanding Carthages footprint and establishing colonies in Spain, Sardinia, the
Balearic Islands east of Spain, Malta, and Sicily while controlling most of the North
African coast along the Mediterranean Sea.3

Rome, in contrast,
was an emerging regional power still fighting to complete its domination of the Italian
Peninsula. While its legions were nearly invincible land formations, Rome had no navy.
When Rome and Carthage came into conflict over spheres of influence in Sicily, the
Carthaginian strategy was to defend from heavily fortified cities and control the seas.
Carthage expected the upstart Rome, which had little experience in expeditionary warfare,
to eventually wear itself out trying to fight with overstretched lines of communication
that it could not protect.

96/97

Determined to defeat
Carthage, in 261 B.C. the Roman Senate made the strategic
decision to build an initial fleet of 120 warships. In addition to rowers, each ship
carried a complement of approximately 125 soldiers. The Romans did not fare well in the
initial sea battles; they could not match the Carthaginians in terms of skill and tactic.
However, the Romans developed a technological leap: the corvus (raven), a boarding
bridge with a beak-like spike on the end that the Roman vessels used to latch on to enemy
ships and permitted their soldiers to storm aboard the Carthaginian vessels. This
innovation practically turned naval engagements into land warfare, the type of battle in
which the Romans excelled. In 260 B.C. at Mylae, 258 B.C. at Sulci, and 257 B.C. at Tyndaris, the Romans won major naval engagements. Finally, in
256 B.C., the Romans defeated the entire
Carthaginian fleet off Cape Ecnomus (southern Sicily), setting conditions for the invasion
of Africa and the siege of Carthage.

Initiating a RMA,
the corvus permitted the Romans to use their superlative skill in land battle to
achieve victory at sea. However, the success of the corvus first required the
strategic willingness to venture into naval combata new domain of warfare for the
Romans. Furthermore, before boarding enemy ships with their infantry Roman warships first
had to master maritime navigation and develop the rowing skills necessary to maneuver
against enemy vessels. Roman admirals had to learn to provide expeditionary logistical
support and to command and control their fleets at sea. The corvus did not merely
improve Romes existing capability in naval warfare, it enabled Rome to effectively
compete victoriously in this new domain.

This RMA did not
make the Romans invulnerable to the vicissitudes of war. It took the Romans another 20
years to win the First Punic War following the introduction of the corvus. Many of
the land campaigns, where the Carthaginians defended strongly fortified cities, were
stalemates despite Roman mastery of land warfare. Good fortune also played a role. In 255 B.C., the Roman fleet lost two-thirds of its ships in a storm that
resulted in the drowning of almost the entire army. That same year, the proconsular
commander of the army besieging Carthage, Marcus Atilius Regulus, blundered at the Battle
of Bagradas. The Spartan general Xanthippus (hired by Carthage to defend the city) used
elephants to shatter the tight ranks of the legions, defeated the Roman army, and captured
Regulus. Additionally, it was about this time that the Carthaginians began to develop
maritime tactics to counter the advantage of the corvus. Those new tactics resulted
in their winning a major naval engagement at Drepana in 249 B.C. This was the Romans worst defeat at sea during the First
Punic War. It was quickly followed by the remainder of the Roman fleet being shipwrecked
by another tempest.

When the First Punic
War was finally settled on terms highly favorable to Rome, another successful land battle
played a critical role after the

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Romans laid siege to
Carthage. The corvus was revolutionary technology that gave the Romans an advantage
which they successfully exploited in a totally new domain. This RMA, however, was not by
itself decisive nor did it permit Rome to ignore the other elements of warfare necessary
to win against Carthage. Conventional victory on land was still required despite the
revolutionary effectiveness of the corvus at sea. A tactical error, as occurred at
Bagradas, could (and did) result in the loss of an entire campaign. Furthermore, the
Romans had to master the basics of warfare in a totally new domainthe seain
order to successfully employ the corvus.

American
Visions of an RMA

Initial speculation
about a twenty-first century RMA was based upon leaps in military
technologiesespecially information technology and by the ability of American
armed forces to leverage these advances.4 According to David Gompert, the revolutions mortar and
pestle are stand-off weapons and information dominancethat is, complete knowledge of
what all enemy and friendly forces are doing.5 With an unparalleled ability to detect enemy forces and rapidly
deliver precision munitions against high-value targets throughout the depth of the
battlespace, US forces were expected to decisively outmatch any potential adversary and
fully dominate every military contest. Joint fires, in most cases, USAF-supplied air
support, would largely replace field artillery.6 The improved
ability of the joint force to strike virtually any target at any location when combined
with greater mobility and lethality implied the need for a much smaller tactical footprint
and fewer ground forces.

The impact of a
posited RMA, and its implications for force structure, has been hotly debated. Following
Operation Allied Force in 1999, some analysts argued that the campaign over Kosovo
demonstrated the capability of joint and combined airpower to force enemy capitulation
without the need for boots on the ground. Charles Dunlap, for example, wrote:
Indeed, Allied Force was the first major operation in which aircraft achieved
victory without the need for a land campaign. What really encouraged airpower enthusiasts
was the apparent vindication of decades-old theories that air attacks could achieve a
psychological effect on an enemy that would force it to yield even when its military
remained in the field able to resist.7 Without employing ground forces in combat operations, according to
champions of RMA theory, the air campaign achieved the military objective stated by
then-Secretary of Defense William Cohen: to degrade and damage the military and
security structure that President Milosevic (Yugoslav President) has used to depopulate
and destroy the Albanian majority in Kosovo.8

Yet other writers
have disagreed with the hypothesis that airpower single-handedly resulted in victory,
pointing out the role played by the

98/99

Kosovo Liberation
Army (KLA) and asserting that the threat of ground force employment by the United States
and its allies was a critical factor in Milosevics decision to capitulate.9
Furthermore, while airpower alone may have arguably been sufficient to force the
withdrawal of the Yugoslavian military from Kosovo, achieving the larger political goals
required a significant influx of peacekeeping forces, a mission that continues with an
American brigade remaining in Kosovo today.

Initial impressions
of the rapid collapse of the Taliban in Afghanistan also seemed to highlight the
capability of airpower in the absence of staging bases and a lengthy buildup of ground
forces. US Special Operations forces were inserted to work with elements of the Northern
Alliance and target precision-guided munitions delivered from the air.10 Stephen Biddle describes the Afghan Model as
SOF-guided bombs doing the real killing at a distance. . . . All [local allies] have
to do is screen US commandos from occasional hostile survivors and occupy abandoned ground
later on. America can thus defeat rogues at global distances with few US casualties and
little danger of appearing to be a conquering power.11 The recent resurgence of Taliban attacks raises doubts
about what once appeared to be an enduring success for US airpower in support of local
forces with minimal employment of American ground units. There is no question that the
Taliban was militarily defeated. Its ability to regenerate and threaten US goals for
Afghanistan shows something was missing from the American militarys initial
campaign perhaps a holistic stability, security, transition, and reconstruction
effort.12 As history has frequently demonstrated, a determined enemy will
reorganize, rearm, and attack again if provided a sanctuary from which to regenerate.

Operation
Iraqi Freedom

Informed by the
experiences in Kosovo and Afghanistan, and imbued with a belief in US technological
dominance, the Department of Defense adopted a campaign plan for Iraq with a relatively
minor role for Army and Marine Corps units. Great expectations were created on the belief
that a massive hail of cruise missiles and bombs falling upon Saddam Hussein and his
leaders would produce the shock and awe necessary to cause the
psychological destruction of the enemys will to fight rather than the physical
destruction of his military forces. As opposed to the armored armada
required for Desert Storm, if shock and awe had the desired effects there would be no need
for an Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) ground campaign.13

Furthermore, many
officials believed that the vast majority of the Iraqi populace would welcome the
overthrow of Saddam Hussein and view Coalition forces as liberators. Over the objections
of then-Chief of Staff of the Army, General Eric Shinseki, a much smaller ground force was
committed to the occupa-

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tion phase of OIF
than many planners thought would be necessary. While General Shinseki estimated that
several hundred thousand troops would be necessary to occupy Iraq, Deputy
Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz called this figure wildly off the mark.14
Believing that an RMA had already occurredand that OIF could be the forcing function
for transformationseemed to be a major factor in the Pentagons insistence on
limiting the size of ground forces to less than half of what General Shinseki and others
believed necessary.

Although it was
certainly a joint effort with a significant ground component, the initial phases of OIF
appeared to validate the ability of US (and Coalition) forces to rapidly defeat a much
larger military. Saddams army, which outnumbered Coalition forces on the ground by a
ratio of three or four to one, was rapidly defeated. Max Boot described this
accomplishment as one of the signal achievements in military history.
Reflecting his belief that it was the result of a successful revolution in US operations,
he further argued:

This spectacular
success was not achieved easily, however. It required overcoming the traditional mentality
of some active and retired officers who sniped relentlessly at Rumsfeld right up until the
giant statue of Saddam fell in Baghdads Firdos Square on 9 April 2003. Winning the
war in Iraq first required rooting out the old American way of war from its Washington
redoubts.15

RMA Skepticism

Yet roughly a year
later, with insurgents dramatically threatening Coalition control in Najaf, Kut, and
Fallujah, it began to appear that much of the sniping had merit. Toppling
Saddams regime as well as his statue only partially achieved OIFs strategic
objectives. As Steven Metz and Raymond Millen dryly note, the intervention in Iraq
went very well from a military perspective but was significantly less successful once the
initial combat abated.16

Of the goals listed
by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld during a press conference in March 2003, at least
two remain in doubt after more than four years of post-major combat operations: capturing
or driving out terrorists from Iraq, and creating the conditions for a rapid transition to
a stable representative government.17
Terrorists such as al Qaeda in Iraq have demonstrated the ability to conduct high-profile
attacks on civilians despite the best efforts of Coalition and Iraqi forces to secure
Baghdad. Although sectarian violence dropped significantly in January through April 2007
following President George W. Bushs announcement of the surge, it began
to rise again in May.18 The current government of Iraq was
democratically elected, but its level of stability and degree of representing the populace
are arguable. Former Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, for example, has been trying to
drum-up opposition to the current Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, arguing that the
present govern-

100/01

ment is too
sectarian: Iraq cannot survive under the current Shia leadership, and Sunnis must
have a much larger role in government.19

Overwhelming
military dominance by the United States (and its Coalition partners) against Saddams
armed forces did not prove decisive in achieving American strategic objectives in Iraq. In
his address to the nation on 10 January 2007, President Bush stated that the United States
had believed that the elections of 2005 (a stunning achievement) would help unify the
Iraqi public. Combined with progress in training the Iraqi police and military, the
administration had hoped the elections would mean a reduction in American forces. However,
the President subsequently recognized that . . . in 2006, the opposite happened. The
violence in Iraqparticularly in Baghdadoverwhelmed the political gains the
Iraqis had made.20

Insurgency and
sectarian violence remain a grave threat to stability, economic recovery, and the ability
of the elected government to responsibly and effectively govern. The situation may not be
nearly as dire as some pundits in the media would have the American public believe, and
the surge (or perhaps the threat of a subsequent withdrawal of Coalition forces) may yet
prove the catalyst for Iraqi national reconciliation. Nonetheless, there is certainly a
long way to go before most Iraqi citizens will be living in a safe and secure environment
under a broadly representative government.

Several participants
at a RAND seminar in 2004 proposed an alternative explanation to the belief that a RMA was
responsible for the rapid victory over Saddams army.21
They espoused that Saddam had planned for his army to initially melt away then rise to
fight as guerillas against Coalition occupying forces; this strategy obviated the US
technological superiority. Thus, even the rapid success of the major combat
phase would not be evidence of a successful RMA because the war for control of Iraq
was designed to be continued by guerillas and insurgents. Seymour Hersh offered a similar
observation:

Were told we
are fighting an insurgency there. Insurgency? No way. Theyre the people
we went to war with: the Sunnis, the people we thought we beat. Its not an insurgent
movement; its the original war, now being foughton their
terms.22

It is worth noting,
however, that suggestions of a melt away strategy on the part of Saddams
army are highly speculative. Virtually no evidence has emerged to indicate that Saddam
even considered such a contingency, much less planned and put the pieces into place to
continue the fight after his military was defeated. Indeed, it appears he was genuinely
surprised when the Coalition routed his forces and attacked into Baghdad.23

Saddam did not
expect the United States to risk the casualties inherent in an operation on urban terrain,
and hamstrung his military commanders due to fears of an uprising or coup.24 It appears that the surprise deployment of

101/02

the Fedayeen Saddam paramilitary fighters
was a result of Saddams plans to control the Iraqi populace, not a Fabian strategy
to defeat Coalition forces. Whether best described as insurgency, civil war, guerilla war,
net-war, terrorism, or a combination of all five of these, the current adversaries in Iraq
began their attacks as an ad hoc effort that has become increasingly well-organized and
sophisticated. At least prior to the surge, the ability of our enemies to
introduce additional combatants into the theater outpaced the US and Coalition
forces ability to capture or kill them.

Despite the
lightning-quick defeat of Saddams army and the destruction of his regime, US and
Coalition forces are no closer to creating a secure environment and forming a stable,
democratic Iraqi government than might have been expected from a less capable but larger
low-tech force. One might even argue that the belief in RMA has retarded
progress in Iraq. Because fewer ground forces were necessary to defeat Saddams
military, there were subsequently fewer units on-hand to conduct post-major combat
operationsparticularly counterinsurgency operations. How could a successful
RMA have resulted in a reduced ability to achieve our strategic objectives?

A New Type of
Warfare?

Analyzing trends in
insurgency since the advent of Maos Peoples War, Thomas Hammes has published a
robust critique that illustrates how over reliance on technology at the expense of human
capabilities has resulted in the long, hard-slog the United States is currently
experiencing in Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom. In The Sling and the
Stone, Hammes argues that DOD is losing its warfighting dominance because it did
not want to deal with the manpower intensive, low-technology conflicts that were actually
taking place around the world. It was much more comfortable to theorize about future
high-technology conflicts with near-peer competitors.25

According to Hammes,
DOD planning documents intended to guide strategic planning for the futuresuch as Joint
Vision 2010 and Joint Vision 2020are built around third generation
warfare (3GW). 3GW is combined arms maneuver warfare that attempts to eliminate an
enemys will to fight by destroying his logistics and command and control
capabilities. 3GW thinking was initiated by the Germans in World War I, but emerged to its
zenith with the Nazi Blitzkrieg in World War II. It continued to develop through US
military doctrine as a way of defeating numerically superior Soviet armies in Western
Europe, being incorporated into concepts such as Air-Land Battle, and is reflected today
in the latest Joint Vision expression of national military strategy.

Meanwhile, Hammes
argues our most dangerous adversaries are successfully using fourth generation warfare
(4GW) against us. He defines 4GW as using all available networkspolitical,
economic, social, and militaryto

102/03

convince the
enemys political decisionmakers that their strategic goals are either unachievable
or too costly for the perceived benefit. It is an evolved form of insurgency.26 He
credits Maos strategy of Peoples War as heralding 4GW.

Accordingly,
the fundamental strength of 4GW lies in the idea or message that is the heart of the
concept. This requires a detailed understanding of the history, culture, and other
human and situational factors that cannot be addressed by technology alone. Yet instead of
addressing the complex political, economic, and social aspects of the conflicts we
are currently facing, current DOD transformation strategy focuses instead on
technological solutions to problems at the tactical-level of war.27 Thus, the failure of the US national security
establishment to evolve to 4GW has provided our adversaries the ability to overcome any
tactical advantage we might have gained in 3GW. It also calls into question the ability of
American forces to successfully perform what the US Army calls operational
art: the ability to translate strategic aims into a logical series of tactical
missions.28 The belief that warfare evolves in
generational waves is a highly debatable hypothesis.29

Nonetheless,
Hammes critical appraisal of DOD transformation efforts are well-taken. He notes:
Much to the surprise of the Joint Vision 2020 proponents, the insurgents have
proven largely immune to our technology.30 Even Antulio Echevarria, a harsh critic of 4GW theory, agrees that
the fundamental rub . . . is how to coordinate diverse kinds of power, each of which
operates in a unique way and according to its own timeline, to achieve specific
objectives, and to do so while avoiding at least the most egregious of unintended
consequences.31

The Real RMA?

Seven years ago
David Tucker presciently raised concerns that an RMA would cause military capabilities to
outpace interagency coordination and planning. He warned:

Rapid simultaneous
engagement of the enemy will not always result in the simultaneous cessation of all
hostilities. Disintegration may induce some of the enemys forces to surrender, but
others will fight on in isolation as cohesive units, perhaps retreating to nearby urban
areas, while others transition to guerrilla warfare. The military, therefore, will be
conducting high-intensity operations in one spot, while in other places it mops up,
provides humanitarian assistance, takes care of refugees, and implements the transition to
a legitimate civilian authority, in these latter cases working closely with other
agencies.32

True, the United
States has demonstrated the ability to quickly crush an adversarys numerically
superior conventional military formations and depose an enemy regime through force of
arms. However, this dramatic in-

103/04

crease in high-tech
military capability has not translated into an improved ability to achieve the strategic
objectives that military power is intended to enable. Instead of improving the ability to
achieve political aims, the unforeseen result of DODs current vision of an RMA is a
tactically more dominant military in a time when traditional military force is not as
useful as it used to be. Meanwhile the ability to apply the other elements of national
power is left lagging.33

In On War,
Carl von Clausewitz posited:

No one starts a
waror rather, no one in his senses ought to do sowithout first being clear in
his mind what he intends to achieve by that war and how he intends to conduct it. The
former is its political purpose; the latter its operational objective. This is the
governing principle which will set its course, prescribe the scale of means and effort
which is required, and make its influence felt throughout down to the smallest operational
detail.34

Unfortunately,
DODs current approach to transformation has nurtured a belief that the tactical
benefits of a technological-RMA would either eliminate the requirement to link tactical
actions with military strategy and political policy, or would make operational art so
simple it was a problem that would solve itself. The panoply of technology currently
employed in Afghanistan and Iraq has not produced strategic victory.

Clever and
determined adversaries, forced to cede the conventional battlefield, have turned to
asymmetric attacks that have proven remarkably resilient against conventional combat
operations. The US military may be losing ground in the area where it is most vulnerable:
the ability to influence civilian populations andin concert with other US government
agencies, allies, and international organizationsto provide basic needs and economic
growth while concurrently developing national political structures and governing capacity.

Even if the
much-vaunted technology-RMA did occur, it ironically appears that military power
alonewhether executed by air or ground forcesmay now be less strategically
decisive than has historically been the case. In virtually every war the United States won
in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, defeating the enemys military and
occupying his capital equaled strategic success and the achievement of political goals.35
Furthermore, in an era in which enemies recognize that the United States possesses
tremendous military superiority, their logical response is to avoid traditional
confrontation. Even at the tactical-level the value of military superiority may be limited
in todays operating environment.

Terry Pudas, the
Acting Director of the Department of Defense Office of Force Transformation, outlined
DODs goals for transformation:

104/05

In information age
operating environments, where rapid change and ambiguity are the norm, [the] competitive
advantage often depends on the availability of multiple effective options. If US military
forces can accelerate the rate of transformation to generate more actionable and effective
options than potential opponents, narrow the range of potential successful actions that
opponents believe are available to them, and maintain initiative by implementing effective
options, then they will be able to impose overwhelming complexity on opposing
decisionmakers.36

This
conceptualization of improvements in relative military capability strongly depends upon
adversaries who operate in hierarchical organizations, enemies that choose to engage in
conventional warfare, and whose decisionmaking processes mirror those of the United
States. In other words, enemies with armed forces similar to ours, enemies that fight the
way we would like them to. The record to date in Afghanistan and Iraq shows that
adversaries using asymmetric tactics and networked organizations have not been overwhelmed
by the complexity of US and Coalition operations. Indeed, overwhelming
complexity can only be imposed on those who choose to manage theater-wide efforts in
a manner similar to modern armies. This concept is meaningless when applied against
non-conventional forces with dispersed decisionmaking structures.

Rather than forcing
the pace of the enemys decision cycle, one could instead argue that American efforts
became reactive once conventional kinetic combat operations toppled the
Taliban and Saddam. When terrorists and insurgents began to use improvised explosive
devices and suicide bombers to attack, the United States appeared to react slowly in
providing units better body armor and armored vehicles. As terrorists began to conduct
high-profile attacks against Iraqi citizens as well as Coalition and Iraqi security
forces, the United States was also slow in adopting a counterinsurgency strategy. The
terrorists and insurgents control virtually no terrain in a military sense and have
zero-chance of achieving their long-range political goals of returning the Bathists to
power, reestablishing Sunni supremacy in Iraq, or creating a Wahabbi caliphate. They do,
however, dominate the media to the point where Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has
publicly declared that the United States has lost the war in Iraq; as a significant
portion of the Congress is clamoring for the withdrawal of American forces.37

In their critique of
technology-centric transformation concepts, Richard Hooker, H. R. McMaster, and Dave Gray
write that war is grounded in the human conditionin the hopes, fears, pride,
envy, prejudices, and passions of human beings organized into political communities and
military bodies.38 Welcome to the real RMA. This RMA is far
different than most adherents and critics predicted a decade or two ago. Insurgents and
terrorists

105/06

have found their own versions of the corvusthe
improvised explosive device, the suicide bomber, and the Internetand have
demonstrated that they know how to apply them against what they have identified as
Americas strategic center of gravity; US political will. Fortunately, although our
enemies have been able to stymie a number of our efforts in Iraq they remain unable to
achieve their own strategic objectives.

The real RMA will
not be purely military. It will be founded on the efforts of strategic thinkers, not
tacticians, individuals capable of understanding and integrating all aspects of national
power. This new RMA will not be realized until the United States develops an effective
system of interagency strategy and operations with the ability to exercise all the
elements of national power; including, but not limited to, the diplomatic, information,
law enforcement, economic, and military aspects of power; elements of power that can
dominate the asymmetric strategies of our enemies.

NOTES

The author wishes to
thank Terrence Kelly, David Kilcullen, H. R. McMaster, Katherine Underwood, and Rick
Waddell for their invaluable advice and assistance.

1. Mackubin Thomas
Owens, Transformation: The Changing Requirements for Victory on the
Battlefield, The Weekly Standard, 23 January 2006, 38.

2. The Acting
Director of the Department of Defense Office of Force Transformation, Terry Pudas, has
written that transformation has replaced the earlier phrase, revolution in military
affairs (RMA) in DOD. RMA connoted rapid, radical and uncontrolled changean
uncomfortable notion for many military professionals. Further, the ambiguity of the
word transformation was an advantage in consensus building. (Terry J. Pudas,
Disruptive Challenges and Accelerating Force Transformation, Joint Force
Quarterly, 42 (3d Quarter 2006), 47.)

8. See
Operation Allied Force, 21 June 1999,
http://www.defenselink.mil/specials/kosovo/ and Kosovo: An Account of the
Crisis, http://www.kosovo.mod.uk/account/nato.htm.

9. The debate
regarding airpower versus ground forces in Kosovo is extensive. For example, see the
series of articles in Air Force Magazine Online,
http://www.afa.org/magazine/perspectives/balkans.asp.

10. The efforts of
the Kosovo Liberation Army in Kosovo may have presaged the Northern Alliances role
in defeating the Taliban.

11. Stephen Biddle,
Afghanistan and the Future of Warfare, Foreign Affairs, 82 (March/April
2003), 31. Biddle notes, however, that contrary to popular belief, there was plenty
of close combat in Afghanistan, 32.

12. Department of
Defense Directive 3000.05, Military Support for Stability, Security, Transition, and
Reconstruction (SSTR) Operations, 28 November 2005,provides guidance for
Department of Defense activities that support US government plans for stabilization,
security, reconstruction, and transition operations, which lead to sustainable peace while
advancing US interests.

14. See Eric
Schmitt, Pentagon Contradicts General on Iraq Occupation Forces Size, The
New York Times, 28 February 2003,
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/attack/consequences/2003/0228pentagoncontra.htm.

16. Steven Metz and
Raymond Millen, Intervention, Stabilization, and Transformation Operations: The Role
of Landpower in the New Strategic Environment, Parameters, 35 (Spring 2005),
43. Metz and Millen argue that the Army can no longer be satisfied with simply
defeating enemies on the battlefield but must subsequently turn them into
nonbelligerents, allies, and friends, 51.

24. See Harry
Keisler, The Invasion and Occupation of Iraq: Conversation with Michael
Gordon, 21 March 2006, Institute of International Studies, University of California,
Berkeley, http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people6/Gordon/gordon-con4.html; and Kevin
Woods, James Lacey, and Williamson Murray, Saddams Delusions: The View from
the Inside, Foreign Affairs, 85 (May/June 2006), 2-26.

25. Thomas X.
Hammes, The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century (Rpt.; St. Paul, Minn.:
Zenith Press, 2006), xii. The seminal 4GW article was The Changing Face of War: Into
the Fourth Generation by William S. Lind, Keith Nightengale, John F. Schmitt, Joseph
W. Sutton, and Gary I. Wilson in The Marine Corps Gazette, 73 (October 1989),
22-26. Other 4GW theorists include Chet Richards (see Jesse Walker, The New
Generation of War: Defense Expert Chet Richards on Lebanon, Iraq, and the Future of the
American Military, Reason Online, 20 July 2006,
http://www.reason.com/news/show/36974.html.

29. The importance
of an idea to rally the forces and encourage others to join ones side is not a new
development. Using threats or promises to change the interest calculations of enemy
decisionmakers is as old as warfare itself.

30. Hammes, The
Sling and the Stone, 189.

31. Antulio J.
Echevarria II, Fourth-Generation War and Other Myths (Carlisle, Pa.: US Army War
College, Strategic Studies Institute, November 2005), 16.

33. One indicator of
transformation drift within DOD may be the activities of the Deputy Under Secretary of
Defense for Business Transformation, Paul Brinkley. Charged with reforming the
Pentagons business operations by working across the military services and
defense agencies to drive rapid transformation of business processes and systems to ensure
improved support to the warfighter and improved financial accountability, Brinkley
actually spends much of his time trying to revive Saddam-era state owned enterprises in
Iraq. (See Mr. Paul A. Brinkley, Biography,
http://www.defenselink.mil/bta/leadership/brinkley.html and Scott Kim, Iraqi
Business Restoration Progressing, 27 February 2007,
http://www.mnf-iraq.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=10231&Itemid=128.

34. Quoted in Allen,
111.

35. Admittedly, this
statement is somewhat tautological because political goals beyond defeating the
enemys military were rarely conceived prior to the decision to go to war.

Dr. Christopher M. Schnaubelt is
the Deputy Director for National Security Affairs, Joint Strategic Planning and Assessment
Office, US Embassy Baghdad, Iraq. A colonel in the Individual Ready Reserve, he is a
graduate of the US Army War College and received a Ph.D. in political science from the
University of California, Santa Barbara. In 2004, he served in Baghdad as the Chief of
Policy in the C-5 Directorate of Combined Joint Task Force-Seven.